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Say what you want, but a college degree is still necessary for high paying jobs.
by magical_mishka 7y ago
Say what you want, but a college degree is still necessary for high paying jobs.
- jdsully 7y agoYes, but the dirty secret is the earning potential of a college student is bimodal - yet people often use averages to discuss the benefits of a college degree. The $30,000 in additional earnings figure is propped up heavily by those making six+ figure salaries. Those who just barely scraped by do not earn more on average than those who only went to high school. If you have the aptitude college will absolutely help. But for those who do not pushing them into college is just saddling them with debt for little benefit.
- jimhefferon 7y agoSome of the people without six figure salaries were interested in a subject that just simply did not pay at a high rate. They, or some of them anyway, may be glad they learned about the subject. (Of course, we are talking about lots of people so many may not be glad about what they did.) My point is just that there are payoffs other than monetary ones. Nothing wrong with monetary, but nothing wrong with the others if that drives you.
- Konnstann 7y agoThe problem is the degree in a topic you are interested in but pays very little costs the same amount. The debate around college is the return on investment, which if you go to college for something you are interested in rather than something you want to market, you don't care about. I can study underwater basket weaving and get a degree in it, but being happy about learning doesn't offset the ~$80k in student loans that will make me very unhappy for a long time.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y ago>They, or some of them anyway, may be glad they learned about the subject. What percentage of college subjects don’t have readily available high-quality material across the Internet for free? Libgen is free. SciHub is free. Whole semesters worth of lectures are available for free on YouTube. It would be stupid to take out loans for a degree that will never break even, when more knowledge is out there for free than ever before in human history.
- opnitro 7y agoHumanities courses often thrive on discussion sections. These are hard to replicate with just books.
- povertyworld 7y agoI think the people who live their life as a series of income maximizing transactions aren't really the humanities type anyways.
- mamon 7y agoAnd hard science, like mathematics or physics relies on teacher helping you get unstuck. Learning the same thing from books takes significantly more time.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago> What percentage of college subjects don’t have readily available high-quality material across the Internet for free? Libgen is free. I trained in a field that might be classed under "areal studies" more generally for a certain stretch of Eurasia. (And not a "useless" humanities subject, but something that does bring desirable job prospects.) The vast majority of literature in that subject is not available online. More recent publications might be created in PDF format, but for the most part students will need to hit the library shelves, even at the undergraduate level. Sure, I have scanned and uploaded a great deal to Libgen myself, but I appear to be the only volunteer doing so for this entire field. Most volunteers on LibGen or r/Scholar don’t want to undertake any more effort than downloading already-digitized materials from behind paywalls and then uploading them to Libgen, they don’t want to do the hard work of scanning thousands of pages. I suspect there are a lot of academic fields where it would take decades for the handful of Libgen volunteers to adequately upload the standard publications in that field.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago>I trained in a field that might be classed under "areal studies" more generally for a certain stretch of Eurasia I'd guess former bomber pilot but the rest of your comment makes me think otherwise.
- jdsully 7y ago> My point is just that there are payoffs other than monetary ones. Nothing wrong with monetary, but nothing wrong with the others if that drives you. The issue is that college imposes a very real and life changing monetary cost on people attending. If you fail to achieve a high paying job after college you will be far behind your peers who never went, and dramatically more limited in your life choices. College debt is the closest we have to indentured servitude in the modern world. For those who just want to learn, continuing education or course auditing is the better solution. I do wish colleges would expand upon these programs.
- learc83 7y ago90+% of all loan disbursements are Federal and Federal loans offer income based repayment plans. You pay 10% of your disposable income (income above 1.5 times the poverty level) for up to 20 years. Not sure that's really far behind. For a family of 4 making the median household income that's roughly equivalent to a cable bill.
- jdsully 7y agoThat's a myopic view of the situation. Under income based repayment most students' loans will actually increase despite the payments. The massive debt will prevent common middle class milestones like getting a mortgage. Further loan forgiveness comes with a balloon payment in the form of taxes - forgiven debt is income according to the IRS. After allowing it to grow unchecked for 20 years the amount forgiven will be substantial. IBR operates very similar to welfare - including the embarrassing intrusion and analysis of your private life by your lenders. It is a last resort option and not something we should be encouraging.
- learc83 7y agoLenders look at monthly payments when calculating debt to income. $150 a month in student loans won't prevent you from getting a mortgage unless $150 is all that's preventing you from affording the mortgage. Cancelled debt is only taxable up to the point of solvency meaning that most people who have a substantial amount of debt cancelled won't owe anything. >IBR operates very similar to welfare - including the embarrassing intrusion and analysis of your private life by your lenders. It is a last resort option and not something we should be encouraging. I've done it. You provide your tax return. They don't care about anything but income. It's by no means intrusive and shouldn't bhe thought of as a last resort.
- myself248 7y agoAll true, but you can also learn about subjects that interest you in more settings than just college. Many of them more engaging, many of them cheaper. People go to college almost entirely for the piece of paper that you can't get just by being passionate about something and exploring it on your own terms.
- jchw 7y agoNo it isn't? It is necessary for some high paying careers, like working in medicine. But, I am certainly a software developer, for a very large company, pretty happy with my paycheck, and I have no degree. Nobody even ever asked me about it. Whether or not it helps is another story, I am not claiming a degree is literally useless. I am however a little rubbed the wrong way by claims that you need a degree to ever have a job that pays good, that seems false.
- snarfy 7y agoNot having a degree in CS certainly limits how far up the ladder you can go. For most jobs at FAANG companies the #1 requirement is a degree. You can be the highest level senior developer at a company but you'll never make director or vp without a degree.
- finder83 7y agoMaybe jobs that require college degrees pay higher on average, but it's just not true that for a high paying job you need a college degree. I was making over 100k before I finished my bachelor's doing computer programming. I've known people who own plumbing, welding, or electrical businesses that have a license that are millionaires that don't have college degrees. Maybe those aren't "jobs", but the highest paying jobs often don't follow the beaten path.
- povertyworld 7y agoIf that's the case why not do a degree you actually enjoy instead of a vocational degree? If you're a millionaire plumber, then paying tuition for an art history degree or whatever should be easy.
- apearson 7y agoWhat makes you think they'd like art history over plumbing? They must have some likeness of their vocation if they decided to go into it.
- povertyworld 7y agoThere's also the issue that money isn't worth much until you transmute it into class privilege by way of elite education.
- tomrod 7y agoOr purchase a timber farm and setup shop. Or invest in a prime developable area near a large metropolis. Or look at the bank account and smile occasionally. Class privilege comes with baggage. Better to focus on making the world a better place, starting with your own world -- which often keeps one from putting their nose up too high.
- imtringued 7y agoActually I'd say it is the other way around. If you're a millionaire plumber then keeping up with other people with a similar level of wealth will reduce the worth of your money massively. At that point you're no longer ahead of 90% of people in the USA. You're at the bottom of your friends circle at least in terms of wealth.
- itsaidpens 7y agoWrong. I make over 200,000 with zero college degree. Professional marketer - including SurveyMonkey in my CV.
- throwaway413 7y agoAnecdata - $400k/yr, no college degree, no high school diploma, 5 years in the industry. Software engineer, self-taught, job-hopped early on.
- gamechangr 7y ago$400k/yr...what's the base/bonus/stock breakdown (seeing your in a throwaway)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- throwaway413 7y agoAll cash, no stock/bonuses (even though I am way overdue for a "bonus"...)
- nilsocket 7y agoI was selected in campus placements. I didn't yet complete my Under Graduate course, because I failed in 3 subjects. I'm being paid more than my colleagues who completed the course from same college.